Cate Blanchett to star as Margo Channing in All About Eve in London

Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!

Cate Blanchett is stepping into Bette Davis’ shoes: the Oscar winner is attached to star in a stage production of All About Eve, EW has confirmed. Blanchett, who recently made her Broadway debut in Chekhov’s The Present, will portray Margo Channing, the bon-mot dropping actress immortalized onscreen by Bette Davis.

Ivo van Hove, who won the 2016 Tony for Best Director of a Play for his production of Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge, is attached to adapt and direct. Sonia Friedman Productions of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child fame will co-produce with Fox Stage Productions (Twentieth Century Fox produced the original film). Though no dates or a theater have been finalized, the production is slated to debut in London’s West End in Spring 2018.

This will mark the first stage adaptation of the 1950 Joseph L. Mankiewicz film, which, until La La Land tied it this year, held the record for the most Oscar nominations with 14. The role of Margo Channing marked a career resurgence for Bette Davis. The classic actress had parted ways with Warner Bros. and been declared washed up by numerous Hollywood columnists when she made a triumphant return as aging theatrical actress Margo Channing. She earned her ninth Oscar nomination, her first since the tail-end of her success at Warner Bros. in 1944’s Mr. Skeffington.

Film critic Pauline Kael wrote of the film, “Ersatz art of a very high grade, and one of the most enjoyable movies ever made…Bette Davis is at her most instinctive and assured. Her actress — vain, scared, a woman who goes too far in her reactions and emotions — makes the whole thing come alive.”

Blanchett has a knack for bringing prickly, complex women like Channing to the stage and screen, previously portraying Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Williams’ Blanche DuBois with the Sydney Theatre Company. In addition to his 2016 Tony Award, van Hove has directed well-received, unorthodox productions of Hedda Gabler and The Crucible.

For those who are already going through Feud withdrawals, Blanchett’s take on the acid-tongued Margo Channing could fill the void.